I’m not an ideal candidate for her son. Not that we’re in any kind of a relationship but still.
And my sister.
She’ll definitely think I’m a whore. Even though in my heart I know that I’m not.
Not to mention my letters.
I still need to hide them. But the thought of not having them close gives me so much anxiety that I haven’t been able to move the shoeboxes.
But I will.
I promise myself that I’ll be smart and I’ll hide them as soon as I get a chance.
Meanwhile though, I should stop.
I know. I shouldn’t take the risk.
If by some miracle Elanor doesn’t know anything and I’m imagining everything, then I got really lucky that night.
I shouldn’t tempt fate.
In fact, I’m not the only one who’s tempting fate. There’s someone else too.
Callie.
She sneaks out like me, all alone. I think she goes out to see Reed Jackson. The guy we saw at the bar a few weeks ago.
I’ve caught her a couple of times but never said anything because she’s always given me my space. But I decide to say something after the Elanor incident.
“Is it him?” I ask her one day, pulling her aside in the library, and she flushes.
I don’t have to explain to her who him is. Her gorgeous villain.
“Not really. But yeah.” Then, “Is it him?”
And she doesn’t have to elaborate on who my him is either. My darling Arrow.
“Yes.” I nod. “Are you going to stop?”
She bites her lip for a second before shaking her head.
I smile sadly at her. “Yeah, me neither.”
“You love him, don’t you?” she asks, but when I clam up, she raises her hands. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me and I don’t need an answer… to know.”
I smile. “Do you? Love him, I mean.”
She doesn’t clam up but there’s a sad smile on her lips. “Guys like that, you don’t love them. You get consumed by them and then you wonder if there was ever a time you didn’t think about them or feel them or hear them. Or see them in your dreams.”
Yeah.
She’s right. You don’t love guys like that. You get eaten up by them and you love every bite they take out of you.
So we’re both tempting fate. And the truth is that we probably will keep doing it.
Or at least, I will.
I will keep sneaking out of my room, scaling the fence and meeting Arrow at midnight. I will keep going out on rides with him where he speeds and I lean back and open my arms, letting my hair fly. I will keep going to his motel room with him too.
That dull gray room where I became his.
Because how can I not?
He needs me, doesn’t he?
He needs me to distract him from all the things inside of him.
He needs me to be a giant pain in his ass and tell him to put out his stupid cigarette when he gets stressed over his supposed failures. Over the fact that he wasn’t with the team, helping them win. When he doesn’t listen to me and puts out his cancer stick, he needs me to put my mouth on his and kiss him, inhaling that smoke into my own lungs.
When he fists my hair and pulls my mouth back, looking all hot and angry, he needs me to tell him, “If you wanna kill yourself, then I’ll die with you too.”
And when he gets all jacked up by that, he needs me to spread my legs so he can fuck it all out of his system.
Oh, and he needs me to show him all the chick flicks so he doesn’t keep watching the game tapes over and over, analyzing his team’s every move.
And when he works out too hard, he needs me to wipe off his sweat.
Because Jesus Christ, he does.
He does work out too hard.
All those weights in his room that I saw the first night, they are for his training. Just because he’s sitting this season out doesn’t mean that he can slack off.
In fact, he’s working harder than ever.
Every morning, he goes for a run. He works on his own drills at the local club house.
Every night when I go to sleep after the awesome sex – he was right; I do slip into a coma-like nap after sex – he works out again, a few feet away from the bed.
One night I wake up from my nap and catch him doing pushups on the floor. On one fucking hand. His other arm is up and folded at his lower back, and he’s shirtless.
When I turn on my stomach to get a good look at him, Arrow’s eyes snap up.
They’re all dark and burning up with this aggression inside of him.
Sweat drips from his forehead as he watches me and does rep after rep. I see the planes on his back moving and shifting, like wings of some kind.